This invention relates to machines for making non-woven bonded carpeting or the like which utilize a pair of elongated members or wires that are moved back-and-forth to fold a plurality of strands of yarn into an accordion-like chain and in one embodiment plant them in an adhesive coating on opposing backing layers and, more particularly, to the portion of such a machine that moves and guides the wires along predetermined paths to effect the folding and planting of the yarn.
The yarn is folded by means of wires held in tension and moved at their ends, which has proven to be a significant advance in the art of making bonded carpeting. Traditionally, such carpet has been formed by the use of elongated blades that extend across the entire width of the machine. These blades are heavy and cumbersome, which requires complicated, expensive and space-consuming components located above the machine so that the blades can be moved to perform the folding and planting operation. In addition, a great amount of energy is required to operate the machine because of the large number of moving parts and their relatively large size. The nature of those machines also limit their operational speed.
The wires described in my pending application have solved those problems. However, although the mechanism shown for holding and enabling the wires to move along their predetermined paths proved workable and offered great advantages over the prior art, it utilized a relatively large number of moving parts by providing means for moving each wire independent of the other one, which contributed to preventing the wires from moving at their potential maximum speed.
In addition, the means used for translating the outer orbital movement of the wires into the non-orbital movement used for folding and planting the yarn was found to limit the speed by which the wires were made to move.